Twenty-five undergraduate faculty, research librarians, curators, and museum educators will be selected to participate in sessions led by distinguished educators and professionals. Participants will have a hands-on opportunity to work with the unparalleled material and academic resources of Columbia University and the city of New York. In addition, the Columbia University Libraries' Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) will videotape and present on the web selected lectures, vastly expanding the reach and impact of the Institute.

The 2011 Institute examines the evolution of "academic" engagement with Eurasia: the historic personalities, institutions, organizations, and research resources that collectively constituted the foundation of Eurasian studies in America. These components will be considered within the broad framework of the geopolitical relations of America and Eurasia over more than 150 years, with the goal of establishing a more broadly applicable paradigm of area studies development in the United States (for Middle Eastern, East Asian, African, Latin American studies, etc.), suggesting avenues of comparative research.

For more information, contact Robert Davis (rhd2106@columbia.edu or 212-854-4701) or Edward Kasinec (ejk83@columbia.edu or 516-712-8305).